DefinePK

Abstract

The objective of the study was two-fold: firstly, to identify and explain the grammatical forms of interference of Indonesian language into English; and secondly, to find out what factors influence the emergence of interference in the writing of the fourth semester students of the English Department of Yogyakarta State University. For this descriptive study, data collection involved a total of 113 academic essays as well as guided interviews with selected candidates. Based on a sample of 58 students’ writing, a total of 95 instances of interference were identified and categorized into four types: Subject-Verb agreement (35 instances), article (18 instances), inflectional construction (26 instances), and vocabulary (16 instances). It was found that the emergence of interference is influenced by two factors: structural and non-structural. The complexities of the English language system together with the English linguistics proficiency of the EFL writers constitute the structural factor, while bilingualism, habit, and time account for the non-structural factor